October 10th - Isaac is 2 days old. For the most part he seemed like a normal baby.. But hey, what do I know? I'm a first time mom. Other than the fact he has not been interested in eating much of anything, he seemed just perfect. I couldn't believe in a few short hours we would be taking our long awaited baby home. I hadn't gotten much rest because I was just too overjoyed about him finally being here. I just wanted to cuddle him and stare at him.
Throughout the 2 days after his delivery he had been spitting up a lot. Of course, being me, I asked the nurses if that was normal for a new baby. They told me during delivery babies swallow amniotic fluid and that was the reason he was spitting up and also not very hungry. Seemed odd to me but what did I know, right? Well at about 5am, when Isaac was 2 days old, the day we were supposed to go home with our new baby, he spit up yet again. This time it was green and looked seedy. I was going to just blow it off because they kept telling me his spitting up was because of the delivery. They never mentioned that green was NOT ok. Thankfully I did call the nurses in and showed them the cloth where he had spit up at. The next series of events happened so fast I can't even remember much of anything..
They had me walk him down to the nursery on the postpartum floor so they could check his tummy out. Luckily, our pediatrician was on the floor doing her rounds early that morning since it was a Monday, she was checking out all her new babies from the weekend. She was told what had just happened and she said they needed to call for a NICU nurse to come up and bring him down for assessment. Was she serious? MY healthy baby needed to be assessed by the NICU? I was not prepared for what I was about to see and be put through in the NICU.
The NICU is a very scary place but also a very good place for babies that need the intensive care. As we walked into the unit I was in total shock. There were monitors going everywhere, screens everywhere, nurses and doctors everywhere, beeps and noises everywhere, the lights were dim and it was almost like organized chaos. This was nothing like I had ever seen. It was not like a typical hospital unit. There were no individual rooms, all the babies were grouped in 4 areas. I assumed by what condition they were in. Isaac was brought to a corner unit and put in a little bassinet. My heart was pounding, my head was aching, my body was terribly sore from just giving birth, I was exhausted, but I had to know what was wrong with my baby. No one was saying anything..
I remember when we first met Dr. Golden. He came over to Isaac's bassinet and told us he was the neonatologist in the NICU and he would be taking care of Isaac. He said they were going to do an abdominal xray immediately to see what was going on. I asked why they needed to do this xray and what they were thinking it was. He told me that because of the green bile spit up, and his distended (which is now a very familiar phrase for us) abdomen that they were thinking he could have some type of intestinal blockage. Before he could even finish the xray machine was at Isaac's bedside. I had never seen a mobile xray machine and I had no idea they could do this at his bedside. Technology. This was the beginning of our journey with Hirschsprung's Disease...
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